AI is transforming customer experience, but is it delivering real value to Sales, Marketing, and Customer teams?
To drive impact and align AI with organisational strategy, Customer Success leaders must:
- Break down data silos to unify customer insights
- Define what success and innovation mean for their teams
- Ensure adoption with intuitive AI and effective change management
- Seamlessly integrate AI into existing systems for maximum value
Customer Success leaders, how are you driving proactive engagement with AI?
Customer Success leaders are keenly aware of AI’s burgeoning potential, and our latest research confirms it. AI is no longer a futuristic concept; it’s a present-day reality, already shaping content strategies for 55% of organisations and poised to expand its influence across a multitude of use cases.
Over the past two years, Ecosystm’s research – including surveys and deep dives with business and tech leaders – has consistently pointed to AI as the dominant theme.
Here are some insights for Customer Success Leaders from our research.
Click here to download “AI Stakeholders: The Customer Success Perspective” as a PDF.
AI in Action: Real-World Applications
The data speaks for itself. We’re seeing a significant uptake of AI in automating sales processes (69%), location-based marketing (63%), and delivering personalised product/service recommendations (61%). But beyond the numbers, what does this look like in practice?
In Marketing, AI tailors campaigns in real time based on customer behaviour, ensuring content and offers resonate. For e.g. in the Travel industry, AI analyses customer preferences to create customised itineraries, boosting satisfaction and repeat bookings. In Sales, AI-driven analysis of buying patterns helps teams stay ahead of trends, equipping them with the right products to meet demand. In Customer Experience, AI-powered feedback analysis identifies pain points before they escalate, leading to proactive problem-solving. We have already seen organisations using conversational AI to enable 24/7 customer engagement, instantly resolving issues while reducing team workload and enhancing CX.
Challenges and Opportunities: Navigating the AI Landscape
However, the path to AI adoption isn’t without its hurdles. Customer Success leaders face significant challenges, including the lack of an organisation-wide AI strategy, data complexity and access issues, and the cost of implementation.
Despite these challenges, the focus on AI to enhance Customer Success is evident, with nearly 40% of AI initiatives geared towards this goal. This requires a more active role for these leaders in shaping AI strategies and roadmaps.
Our research reveals that there lies a critical gap: Customer Success leaders have limited involvement in AI initiatives. Only 19% are involved in identifying and prioritising use cases, and a mere 10% have input into data ownership and governance. This lack of participation is a missed opportunity.
The 2025 Vision: AI-Driven Customer Success
Looking ahead, Customer Success leaders expect AI to deliver significant benefits, including improved customer experience (56%), increased productivity (50%), and enhanced innovation (44%). These expectations underscore AI’s pivotal role in shaping the future of customer success.
To fully harness AI’s potential and advancements like Agentic AI, leaders must take a more active role. This means driving a clear AI strategy, tackling data challenges, and working closely with IT and data science teams to ensure AI solutions address real customer pain points and business gaps.
